GRAND CANYON, AZ – A giant Mexican tarantula was seen terrorizing tourists at the Grand Canyon!

GRAND CANYON, AZ – A giant Mexican tarantula was seen terrorizing tourists at the Grand Canyon!

Yesterday morning a group of tourists from Sweden reported seeing an enormous, hairy creature crawling across the Skywalk, the glass-bottomed walkway overlooking the Grand Canyon.

Herbert Bratton, a Grand Canyon National Park ranger, rushed to the scene after receiving the phone call from the petrified Swedes

“It was hard to understand exactly what was going on because of their accents and the fear in their voices,” said Bratton. “But I knew something terrible had happened.”

Bratton arrived at the Skywalk just in time to catch a glimpse of the creature. He described it as a humongous, black and red spider with hairy knees, razor-sharp fangs, and a cluster of black, menacing eyes.

“The thing was as big as a house,” added Bratton. “It must have been more than 30 feet wide!”

The Swedes who witnessed the spider attack were rushed to the hospital to be treated for symptoms of shock and altitude sickness. Though they could not be reached for comment, they did leave the Weekly World News with these shocking photographs:

This is not the first time the gigantic tarantula has been spotted creeping around the Grand Canyon. The first sighting of the so-called “Grand Canyon Tarantula” occurred in 1929, when a group of Boy Scouts from Seneca, Washington, reported seeing a “large, shaggy arachnid” crawling around their campsite.

Since then, over 450 tarantula sightings have been filed with the Grand Canyon National Park Safety and Human Services Committee.

Dr. Allen Spivak, a zoologist at Arizona State University, has been studying the “Grand Canyon Tarantula” since 1992. He says the creature is most likely a mutated form of the Mexican Red Knee Tarantula.

“These spiders are very common in the American Southwest,” said Spivak. “They’re extremely dangerous. One bite from a Mexican Red Knee tarantula and you could be dead within hours.”

In light of recent events, the Grand Canyon Parks and Recreation Committee has decided to close the Skywalk exhibit, citing “routine maintenance” as their justification.

“This has nothing to do with the giant tarantula,” said chief ranger Patricia O’Neil, “Besides, that thing isn’t even real. It’s just a myth.”

However, the Parks Committee’s decision to shut down the exhibit is not deterring tourists from flocking to the Grand Canyon and trying to catch a glimpse of the rock-climbing arachnid.

Peter Holsten, a retired mechanic from Salt Lake City and self-professed “mutant hunter,” arrived at the canyon with a tranquilizer gun.

“I’m not resting till I have that spider’s head on a stake,” said Holsten, who plans to spend all of next week camping in the canyon. “I’ll die before I ever let him terrorize another group of innocent Swedes.”

“And when I catch him,” added Holster, “the whole world will know he ain’t no myth!”